This isn't Mozart's Salzburg anymore, part 9 of 10

Thursday:

Mozart hated Salzburg; he found it provincial.  Although today it is a Mozart- and Sound-of-Music mecca, in his time this settlement nestled along the Salzach River was a salt-mining town and garrison.  The picture at left was taken from the fortress that overlooks the Altstadt.  I can’t get over the fact that the Festung Hohensalzburg was a fortress built by and for the various princely (arch)bishops who ruled here.  I am familiar with the Church’s secular and political Macht (power) up into the early-modern period, but the obvious militariness of it all is even more disturbing than the fact that they’ve set up a jail cell as a torture chamber, even though no prisoners were actually subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques here (the German audio guide makes this point twice).  Most of the rooms are pretty much empty, although there is a smallish museum of period material culture (furniture, tableware, jewelry, instruments).  In the gift shop I notice a sign the says the speedy Bergbahn up and down the plateau will be out of service beginning in January, in order to make improvements and decrease the ride time!  I guess it's a bottleneck during the tourist season.

There is also an unrelated Marionette Museum tucked in one corner.  Because the marionette theater is not playing anything the nights we’re in Salzburg, I make it point to stop in here.  I associate stringed puppets with Central Europe, not because of the Sound of Music, but because on my first trip there (to Prague in 1994), my brother and I were quite taken with the marionettes a street performer used.  In a box somewhere are the puppets on which we spent our precious souvenir money, a witch and a wizard.  And anyway, Richard Rogers got the idea for the "Lonely Goatherd" scene from the puppet theater that was founded here in 1913 already.  (The one at Schloβ Schönbrunn in Vienna may be older.)  Unsurprisingly, Mozart operas are a staple of marionette theater in Austria; you can see as at right as Papagano and Papagena from Die Zauberflöte.

We are traveling after the usual tourist season (which ends with October) and before the holiday season, so we thankfully miss most of the crowds.  Normally both DH and I bemoan the bleeding of Advent into the fall (the Christmas chocolates appeared in the grocery stores in Dresden two weeks before Halloween!).  However, we are grateful this one time that merchants are catering to tourists and have started the holidays early, because it means we get to “do” Christmas together this year after all.  And in fact, the Christkindlmarkt opens on the squares around St. Peter’s Cathedral and the Residenzschloss today.  We ogle the rows upon rows of straw, glass, and painted-wood decorations which would be adorable if it weren’t so obvious they were mass-produced.  We try a Schneeball (left) and a Winter Zauber (an alcoholic hot chocolate too strong for our tastes).

Then it’s back to the hotel to warm up and nap before going out for dinner.  We first try the traditional Austrian Stuberl next door, but it turns out that it is most authentic in its smokiness, something I have quickly come to associate with Salzburg, because it seems like someone near us is constantly smoking.  Austria is governed by the European Union’s smoking regulations, which require that restaurants have smoking and non-smoking sections (the “club” next door is apparently exempt).  However, of all the restaurants we visit with separate sections, not one ever actually closed the doors between the two sections, so it seems Europe is where much of the United States was ten years ago.  We are happy to live in a state that has gone smoke-free, because we are both fairly sensitive to smoke.  So we quit the Stuberl for the restaurant on the corner that is smoke-free, almost empty, and serves Austrian, Italian, and Indian cuisine.  We consume a yummy candle-lit meal of tortellini and schnitzel.